Originally published Oct. 7. Updated Oct. 9.

TOWN OF WASHINGTON — Medical first responders pronounced a rural Monticello farmer dead at the scene after he became pinned under his combine while harvesting Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 7, the Green County Sheriff’s Office reported.

John P. Marty, 62, had been using the combine to pick soybeans in a field along Little Sugar Lane just west of Monticello when the machine had a mechanical problem.

“It appears that Mr. Marty was laying in front of one of the tires of a combine working on the head of the equipment when it rolled forward, pinning him under the tire,” Sheriff Jeff Skatrud wrote in a news release.

Marty called 911 for help shortly before 2 p.m. while trapped under the combine, said Monticello Fire Chief Kevin Komprood. The ignition was still running.

A Monticello firefighter was able to back the combine off of Marty and free him.

“Quite a few life-saving measures” were tried, Komprood said. Firefighters set up a landing zone in a nearby hayfield for a MedFlight helicopter from the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.

Medical personnel traveling with the MedFlight team pronounced Marty dead. Green County EMS, Monticello police and Green County deputies assisted in the response.

Monticello firefighters were still on scene when they got called to a cornfield on fire two miles south on Fairview Road. It had started from a neighbor’s burn barrel and about two acres burned, Komprood said.

A ‘big member of the community’

Komprood said Marty was “a big member of the community here.” A longtime dairy and crop farmer in the area, Marty also owned rental properties in and around Monticello and was the decades-long owner of a tavern on Main Street, The Rathskeller.

For first responders who witness such accidents firsthand, “it gets tough,” he said. “It’s not like in a big city where you don’t know the people you’re helping. You know pretty much everybody you’re on a call for.

“We just talk through it. That’s about all you can do.”

Komprood anticipates the community will rally around the family to help them through the sudden and tragic loss.

The family is “busy making arrangements, and then of course it’s harvest time with all the corn and soybeans coming in. I’m sure the neighbors are going to step up and help him out.”

Agriculture ranks among the most hazardous industries, with about 100 suffering a lost-work-time injury every day in the United States, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. In 2017, more than 400 farmers and farm workers died from a work-related injury.

Komprood has words of caution for farmers during harvest time.

“If you’re doing any work on any type of machine, make sure it’s shut down and not moving,” he said.